The Political Conundrum!

Michael Yon has posted the new directive, sigend three days ago by Deputy Defense Secretary England, which provides the clearest statement yet of DoD policy and command responsibilities for "counterthreat finance" operations. The directive permanently institutionalizes the "threat finance cell" concept which has been the subject of joint operations between the Treasury and Defense Departments for over three years, and that I have written about for over a year here (see previous posts and my remarks on the subject to a money laundering enforcement conference on October 21). Never before has U.S. defense policy officially recognized the need to "follow the money" and the benefits of working in tandem with the Treasury Department and other relevant civilian agencies.

As you might imagine, the Defense Department cannot talk openly about the successes of the Iraq TFC, but Gen. Petraeus is taking the concept with him to Afghanistan, along with at least one of the TFC experts in the Pentagon. Senior Treasury Department officials told me in October "it's the best thing we have going." Hopefully the Congress will also recognize the benefit by providing specific and sufficient funding for the hiring, training, and deployment of experts in all departments involved.